As workers and students struggle, food banks are becoming a necessity

Second Harvest volunteers Matt Bunde and Lakeisha Robottom help sort and weigh boxes of oranges.

Second Harvest volunteers Matt Bunde and Lakeisha Robottom help sort and weigh boxes of oranges.

Photo: Photos By Cody Glenn / Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Photos By Cody Glenn / Special To The Chronicle

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Second Harvest volunteers Matt Bunde and Lakeisha Robottom help sort and weigh boxes of oranges.

Second Harvest volunteers Matt Bunde and Lakeisha Robottom help sort and weigh boxes of oranges.

Photo: Photos By Cody Glenn / Special To The Chronicle

As workers and students struggle, food banks are becoming a necessity

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Amid the millionaires and billionaires of Silicon Valley, the working poor and cash-strapped college students struggle to pay ever-increasing rent, leaving little left over for food.

And, increasingly, they are turning to Second Harvest Food Bank for help.

These workers, many with two jobs, and college kids with full course loads have upended the image of the hungry, said Leslie Bacho, Second Harvest chief executive.

“More and more of the people we see are working,” she said. “What we see is for so many people, especially outside the tech sector, wages have been relatively flat.”

How to Help

For 32 years, The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing Fund has helped more than 150,000 Bay Area individuals and families facing unexpected life crises. Want to help? You can donate at www.seasonofsharing.org. You can also use our text message options:

<factbox_bullet>Text-to-Give: Text SOS to 27722 to make a one-time $25 donation to the Season of Sharing Fund. The donation is added to your cellphone bill.

<factbox_bullet>Text-to-Donate: Text SHARING to 27722 to make a donation to the Season of Sharing Fund using your credit card.

Despite low unemployment and a relatively strong economy, food banks are seeing an increasing number of clients every year, with 260,000 people currently served by Second Harvest in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties each month.

“Unfortunately for so many of the people we serve, things have not gotten that much better,” Bacho said. “Often food is the first to go when you’re trying to pay your medical bills, or you want to stay housed.”

For 32 years, The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing fund has contributed to Second Harvest and other Bay Area food banks, providing a total of $21 million to help provide meals to needy individuals and families.

It’s money the food banks can count on year after year, Bacho said.

“Since the fund started, it has provided over $5 million to Second Harvest,” she said, adding that’s the equivalent of 10 million meals. “Knowing that you have funders you can count on year after year really helps us for our planning.”

But the food banks still have had to get creative to be able to serve the wide range of people in need.

To better help students, Second Harvest has opened food pantries in 10 community colleges and at San Jose State University.

“So many of the students are struggling to afford rent, tuition and still have leftover (money) for food,” Bacho said. Once the word got out, she said, the students started coming. “It has been surprising to me the success of having distribution on these college campuses,” she said.

Photo: Cody Glenn / Special To The Chronicle

Volunteers Lakeisha Robottom of Los Angeles, left, and Katrina Bray of Sacramento, both CAL Water employees, sort oranges at Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose on Thursday December 6, 2018.

Lauren Cook was working four jobs while attending San Jose State when she first saw a flyer for the on-campus food pantry. She and her roommate started going once a month, filling their refrigerator and cupboards with rice, eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables and even the occasional whole chicken.

The food allowed her to cut back on work hours some and eat healthy meals.

A college student “shouldn’t have to live off Ramen and crap food,” she said.

Cook graduated in 2017 and now is working at a Sunnyvale tech startup, where she’s running a food drive for Second Harvest, “to thank them for all the help they’ve given me.”

Meanwhile, with the cost of housing skyrocketing, a family of four in Santa Clara County earning $94,450 or less is considered low-income by the federal government — meaning many people with jobs need help putting food on the table.

Second Harvest adjusted schedules to serve working families, opening more pantries on the weekends and in the evenings.

Photo: Cody Glenn / Special To The Chronicle

Ray Enriques of San Jose uses a fork lift to stack food which will later be distributed to those in need at Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose on Thursday December 6, 2018.

Ray Enriques of San Jose uses a fork lift to stack food which will...

All told, the food bank distributes 66 million pounds of food each year — the equivalent of 55 million meals.

Second Harvest has also gotten creative in finding alternative sources of food, with volunteers hitting up 100 Starbucks stores each day to pick up salads, sandwiches, protein boxes and other items with a limited shelf life to distribute to shelters and other locations.

But even with donations of food, the food bank has to raise $40 million annually to back fill the need — purchasing milk, eggs, chicken.

About a quarter of the food distributed is purchased, Bacho said.

Last year, the Season of Sharing Fund distributed $1.3 million to Second Harvest and other food banks in the nine Bay Area counties to buy fresh produce and healthy food.